![]() ![]() I should have been quite delighted with his application, had he been cheerfully industrious. He ran a day and night line, copying by sun-light and by candle-light. “As if long famishing for something to copy, he seemed to gorge himself on my documents. ![]() Initially, Bartleby demonstrates his intense productivity as a copyist, as he is able to complete “an extraordinary quantity of writing.” However, even in this initial stage of extreme productivity, there appears to be a foreshadowing of the disappointments that lay in store. With this description there’s a strong sense that Bartleby is small in size and withdrawn, introverted. I can see that figure now- pallidly neat, pitiably respectable, incurably forlorn! It was Bartleby” (Melville, 6). The title character is hired and his personality and demeanor are well described: “In answer to my advertisement, a motionless young man one morning, stood upon my office threshold, the door being open, for it was summer. This is but one interpretation of a multi-faceted work of art, of which many interpretations may emerge.Īt its starkest construction, Bartleby, the Scrivener refers to the story of how an attorney with a thriving business servicing the legal needs of wealthy men, hires a scrivener to help with the enormous tasks of copying. Bartleby, the Scrivener shows what happens when individuality is selected over all else to the point of self-destruction. Humans need to protect their individuality and still encourage their sense of social interdependence in order to survive. To analyze this masterpiece is to commit to confronting its elusiveness, mercurial nature and the paradox at its core. Delving into Bartleby, the Scrivener in an analysis essay empowers the reader to be illuminated by the numerous cogs and wheels that make the short story an evaluation of capitalism in America, 19th century labor relations, stifled homoeroticism or a coded enigma for one of the many texts that influenced Melville (Kahn). Literature is after all the study of human existence, and this short story highlights the incomprehensibility of the minutia of human interaction in the workplace. Instead, he sought a razor sharp stare into the mundaneness of the human condition, suggesting answers to the most mysterious conundrums. It’s also important to note that this story was a break from Melville’s more typical adventure tales of the era. One of the main reasons that critics herald it as such a masterpiece is because it can be interpreted in so many ways-as a supernatural tale, as a psychological projection, as a comedy of the modern workplace, as an indictment of the modern workplace, as a meditation on the human condition-and numerous other interpretations. 6.2 Verbal and Non-Verbal Communicationīartleby, the Scrivener by Herman Melville is one of his most elusive and compelling short-stories, one that most critics deem to be his ultimate masterpiece. ![]()
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